Is Font-Face Ready for Primetime?
Apr
26
After listening to this month's presentation at TC Web Pros, I was inspired to start using @font-face on my websites, to start using custom fonts. Typekit.com is one source help you get started, and even better, the Minnesota-based Kernest.com.
And while I'd say it's easy to implement and very cool, there is one big issue I have found- Windows XP doesn't seem to do anti-aliasing very well, and even with Clear Type enabled, the custom fonts can look jagged and rough. This seems to be all browsers, running on Windows XP.
I found an article off Unmatched Style that discusses these and other problems at length, as well as some solutions. I'd love to start using @font-face and definitely support it, but I'm not sure these type of workarounds are fool-proof and not always so straightforward to implement.
Anyone else have an opinion on this? Am I wrong? Despite browser-support, is @font-face really ready for primetime?
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#1 Leave your comments
Submitted by danmoriarty on Mon, 2010-04-26 14:53.
Leave your comments below, thanks.
#2 Decreasing XP Users
Submitted by Michael Burrows on Fri, 2010-04-30 14:39.
So I was just looking to see what my test page looked like in XP and I see what you meant. It stinks that XP doesn't have anti-aliasing for the @font-face. Hopefully the number of XP users will start to decrease faster than 1% a month (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp).
#3 Apparently, this is NOT fixed
Submitted by danmoriarty on Mon, 2010-05-03 08:40.
Apparently, this is NOT fixed in Vista either. I think we have to wait for IE9, which will reportedly have a different font aliasing technology. And hopefully that will also translate to Firefox and other browsers working on Windows.
#4 Been researching this all
Submitted by Chad on Wed, 2010-05-19 19:29.
Been researching this all morning. Font rendering is still not consistent using font-face, and particularly on windows systems it just looks bad.
Not ready for primetime.
#5 Update
Submitted by danmoriarty on Tue, 2010-11-02 15:38.
I came across an interesting post on FontSquirrel, and they touch on this subject. They suggest that some fonts may be rendering ok in Windows, when using their font-generator tool. I'll have to try it and see. http://www.fontsquirrel.com/blog/2009/11/what-to-expect-from-our-font-fa...
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